Do People Still Click on Pay Per Click Ads?

When I talk to clients about pay per click advertising, I of course get a lot of the usual push-back: "I never click on those" "My competitors are going to click on my ads costing me money" "I only want to be number one, and it’s going to cost too much money" In truth, this medium for advertising has been widely successful for a host of industries, cost-effective, fine-tuned and targeted marketing messages, delivered to the right audience. These are the things that have made Google Adwords, and other search engine advertising platforms, a great option. Perhaps the greatest option ever available! Something has obviously been behind Google’s meteoric rise and profitability. The advertising lovefest has of course been grounded in people’s continued growth and acceptance of text ads as and viable partner to natural search results. This bedrock requirement was recently shaken by a report by leading web analytics provider comScore, basically reporting that Google ads were down versus last year, and sharply in the last few months. Could it be a coming sea change was afoot in web-based search? Was public opinion and ultimately use of sponsored-link search advertising on the wane? Investors certainly jumped the gate, hammering the search engines stock on Wall Street. Some recent new information, referenced in this great article on slate.com, points the finger back at the reporting methodology. It turns out perhaps comScore might have a pretty large margin of error, and has had to back off it’s original assertion and data. Hmm… Conclusions: Obviously any version of future PPC and PPC success is going to evolve and be tied to search engine use and intuition. It’s reported demise is highly premature however, and Google continues to be a great marketing medium!